2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Researchers Who Unraveled How Cells Sense Oxygen

A triad of investigator from the U.S. and the UK has won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine , the first of five swag to be announced this week . On Monday in Sweden , the Nobel committeeannouncedthat Americans William Kaelin Jr. and Gregg Semenza , along with Peter Ratcliffe , would split the nearly million - dollar prize for their oeuvre in untangle a fundamental aspect of life : how our cells keep track of and reply to fluctuating oxygen levels .

This yr ’s prize was tenner in the devising .

Though we ’ve long known that our cellular telephone need O to farm energy and keep us alert , we were largely in the darkness on how cellular telephone sense oxygen , or how they managed to adjust in times of humiliated oxygen , a state known as hypoxia . In the former nineties , Gregg Semenza , currently of Johns Hopkins University , and his team discovered some of the key inherited machinery that cells utilise to detect hypoxia and then reply by producing a endocrine called erythropoietin ( EPO ) .

Photo: (Getty Images)

https://gizmodo.com/nobel-prize-for-medicine-awarded-to-researchers-who-har-1829436863

Semenza and Ratcliffe , from Oxford University , independently figured out that this machinery was found in almost every type of cellular phone throughout the body , with Semenza strike it the hypoxia - inducible gene , or HIF . Ratcliffe and William Kaelin Jr , a Crab investigator at the Dana - Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School , subsequently discovered that another gene , call VHL , was crucial to HIF working correctly . In the early 2000s , both of their research groups also rally out the final pieces of the puzzle , discovering the protein interactions that grant jail cell to smell out O and regulate their VHL - HIF machinery .

accord to the Nobel citizens committee , the trio ’s employment has allow for other scientists to well understand a wide-cut array of human bodily process , from usage to how we develop in the womb . And their efforts will likely pave the agency to better treatment for certain cancers and condition like cam stroke , chronic kidney failure , and heart attacks .

Illustration:

From left to right: William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. SemenzaIllustration: (Nobel Media)

“ They were extremely glad , and felicitous to share the loot with each other , ” Thomas Perlmann , a member of the Nobel Assembly , said at the league held Monday at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden , Reuters reported .

There was some time geographical zone - touch on clumsiness , though . While Ratcliffe was already at his office by the time the Nobel citizens committee called , Semenza was fast asleep , as Sweden is six hours in the lead of the easterly time zone where Johns Hopkins is in the first place based . Initial attemps to reach Kaelin went to a awry number , harmonize to Reuters .

The rest of the workweek will see Nobel prizes award in the fields of physic , interpersonal chemistry , and lit , as well as the Peace dirty money for meliorate extraneous relations .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.